


Baste

by tnico



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Institutional Abuse, Kaer Morhen, Young Witchers (The Witcher), and all the unwitting cogs who aid and abet it, hurt no closure, mostly a collection of vibes on that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27478432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tnico/pseuds/tnico
Summary: "I wasn't gonna come back, but I heard the news," Lambert tells him."The rule of winter can be considered-- suspended," Vesemir replies.Lambert stares at him for a long moment. "Winter. Right."
Relationships: Lambert & Vesemir (The Witcher)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 110





	Baste

**Author's Note:**

> CONTENT WARNING HEED THIS:  
> you might as well consider this fanged: bad end. frank reference to institutional child abuse, implied to be sexual, are the backbone of this story.
> 
> also i make use of mentioned witcher 3 minor characters who did not do the crimes here canonically, for reference.

Lambert returns just at the cusp of real winter, after the burnings but while they still can't yet be sure what's snowdrift and what's ashes.

That had been first to address; the routine act they all knew for deterring necrophages had been a balm of mindlessness for the survivors. They'd all long learned how to prep a corpse for disposal without dwelling on who, exactly, they'd be burning.

They hadn't burned the invaders' corpses. The snowfall had kept them from rotting where they lay.

The mage's tower had been left untouched, as well.

Any corpses left in there had likely already been burned.

A young witcher isn't meant to come back to winter until they've survived a good four winters out on the Path, the dues paid to train them up and let their elders rest. Any other time, Lambert would have been locked out of the keep for daring to show his face after one bare year.

Remus, the only other survivor of his cohort's last trial, had already returned. It hadn't seemed so concerning, then, that only two boys of that lot had made it. There would be others, so the wisdom went. There always were.

It's an unspeakable relief to have their youngest back with them.

Vesemir wonders if there will be others, any more.

Heironymus and the mages were among the dead, all burned alive in their tower like the younglings who'd been sent to shelter there.

* * *

"I wasn't gonna come back, but I heard the news," Lambert tells him.

"The rule of winter can be considered-- suspended," Vesemir replies.

Lambert stares at him for a long moment. "Winter. Right."

* * *

"Heard about the kids," is the next thing Lambert tells him.

"Yes," Vesemir answers, grave.

Lambert's tone is as supercilious and mocking as when he was still Vesemir's responsibility. He'd never been able to train it out of him. But not even Heironymus, burned to death in his own tower, ever had. "Yeah, must be a real pity for you. Didn't even get to feed 'em poison before they were murdered. That's mobs for ya," Lambert continues, with a click of his tongue. "Just got no respect for the proper _protocol_."

Vesemir can feel his face tightening. He schools it into neutrality again with a breath out. Rising to Lambert's barbs has only ever given him the opportunity.

(Those that call him prickly are more right than they know; the things he says will stick to one's mind, dig in and become tangled and intractable to removal through the front of a hundred little burrs.)

"Lambert," he says, letting a firm authority push through on the directive, "Enough."

Lambert scoffs and rolls his eyes at him, but thankfully stops, stomping off to the courtyard.

Vesemir doesn't allow himself to be grateful for it. He knows he hasn't the right.

He'd always known that. It's why he'd never tried all that hard, training the insolence out of Lambert.

* * *

Vesemir doesn't know what to do at first, when Lambert breaks into Heironymus's lab.

It's the sort of brazen disregard for protocol that always made him so difficult to handle. But it's Lambert's specialty, finding the protocol that'd just been the unspoken rule, taken for granted rather than enshrined into law, and then throwing it to the ground so everyone around him will see him shatter it into pieces.

No one else had even tried to enter the tower yet, after the fires.

"What are you trying to--" Vesemir barks as Lambert shoulders past him. He's brought up short when Lambert grabs the side of Heironymus' desk and yanks the side of it, pulling out an elaborately concealed compartment.

Vesemir is staggered by the reveal, a rack of tubes and bottles filled with liquid he didn't know about. But Heironymus had always had his secrets, Vesemir thinks somewhat dazedly, as Lambert rifles through them with old familiarity.

Lambert, Vesemir is realizing, must have somehow discovered them in the supplementary lessons he'd been meted with the man. Lambert had been scheduled to meet with him for extra lessons on curbing his behavior so frequently it'd lasted up until his final trial.

As Vesemir is processing this, it's interrupted. Lambert has gone from running quick fingers over the bottles, selecting here and there, to a sudden smashing of his handful onto the floor with a suddenly vicious temper, stomping once for good measure and then grinding the shards beneath his heels with his face twisted into a cold sneer.

"What was--" Vesemir says, another faltering command. "Lambert! That's all we have left, we may still need to use--"

"What," Lambert snarls, whirling to turn on Vesemir, and he's so taken aback by the sheer vitriol in Lambert's tone he can feel himself settling into a fighting stance. Lambert seamlessly assumes the same position in Vesemir's image-- _like I trained him to, goes the fleeting thought --_ and continues, taunting. "Were _you_ gonna use 'em? No kids _left_ for your fucking _supplementary lessons,_ " he mocks.

Vesemir is at a loss. It's the sort of anger he's faced with he hadn't seen since he'd taken Lambert from his father, the defiant, spitting rage of a child powerless to stop themselves from being hurt and angry at the world for it. He attempts to rally best he can. "I know the supplementary lessons were--"

"Oh _yeah,_ the _supplementary lessons,_ " Lambert returns, immediate and derisive. "Really taught me _so much_ I been using on the _Path._ Well," he says, in a pantomime of considerations, snagging another vial and tossing it in his hand once before letting it fall insolently from his fingers to shatter on the ground in a burst of clear liquid, "Actually, the control over my gag reflex _does_ help with getting potions down, nowadays. Would you look at that! Learned something from those _lessons_ after all."

Vesemir feels a sudden bolt of agitation that has nothing to do with the destruction of Heironymus's formulas. He can't be implying-- "The lessons," Vesemir says, voice low, casting glances to Heironymus's desk. "Are you saying you…"

Vesemir trails off. Lambert is looking at him the way he does to insects. To another man, that phrasing might mean scorn, but for Lambert it's always been sharp-edged interest, a piercing attention that betrays the full extent of his curiosity-- a desire to dissect the subject piece by piece, lay out to the base components and puzzle out the movements and place of each part.

* * *

Vesemir had caught him doing that to insects once, long ago when he was just a small boy. His heart had caught in his chest, because the last time he'd caught a boy alone and torturing an animal, they'd had to cull him before his last trial.

He'd grabbed Lambert too roughly, pulling him off the creature. All the times previous, when Lambert had been grabbed, he'd instinctually and always fought like a wildcat, spitting and scratching included. Now, the struggle lasts but a moment before he stills, going limp and dead weight.

Heironymus's lessons seemed to have some influence, at least. That was what Vesemir had thought, at the time.

"What?" Lambert had snarled, the hatred in him still far too old for his age. "S'not like it wasn't already _dead_ and nobody minded that I _kil't_ it. Master Heironymus does it to the boys on the _slab_ and you never care _then._ "

Vesemir didn't think to ask, how Lambert even knew about the autopsies when he hadn't even undergone his first trial. Why he'd even been allowed that deep into Heironymus's lab, at his age.

He'd reported the encounter to Heironymus, at the time. The mage had assured him it was simply as backstep and evidence Lambert needed further development. Barmin had agreed, and ruled for the supplementary lessons to continue.

* * *

"The lessons," he says. Vesemir is a witcher. It's natural instinct to process in parallel, observation running concurrent but separate from train of thought. It's all getting tangled, now, one heedlessly crashing into the other in a way they haven't since he was almost young. Not just caught flatfooted, but fundamentally knocked off his feet. "What is-- what were you and Master Heironymus doing?"

Lambert rolls his eyes. "You _know_ ," he says. "Don't be an idiot."

"I don't," Vesemir says.

"Heironymus told me about you and _Geralt_ \--"

Vesemir feels his blood run cold. "I don't know _what_ Heironymus told you about me and Geralt, but I would _never_ \--"

"See, you know," Lambert points out, in a neat snip that cuts Vesemir off and to the quick. "So why d'you need me to say it?"

* * *

"Lambert," Vesemir tries to say, days later, when they're alone in the armory. "if I'd known--"

"--you'd have let me die in agony on a table anyway," Lambert says, with a flippantly sardonic overtone that sits like something too oily in Vesemir's stomach, like Lambert thinks he's in on a joke that Vesemir's not. "When, exactly, was I supposed to get the impression you'd care?"

"I would have done something," Vesemir says.

"Oh, that's rich," Lambert drawls, turning the dagger he'd been sharpening over. "Tell me, Papa Vesemir, and to whom would you have gone?"

"Barmin and Varin would never have stood for--" Vesemir starts.

"BARMIN!?!" Lambert echoes, with a squawk of incredulous laughter he clearly can't control. It's an ugly noise, ricocheting around the rubble before being lost to the sky. "Oh, yeah, _Barmin,_ so you'd bring it to him, huh? And that's how it'd go? Holy _shit_ , you really _didn't_ know anything, did you?"

"Ahh, Vesemir," Lambert pats him on the shoulder in passing as he walks from the room. "I'd tell ya to never change, but ain't like ya ever will."

* * *

He thinks, once, wildly, shamefully, that maybe this is a deception on Lambert's part. Vengeance, in the form of a horrible lie about men too dead to defend their names.

It seems more believable than it being the truth. Men who could know, who could still do, still allow something so foul.

Men Vesemir had thought he'd known better.

That all this could be carried on in front of Vesemir with him never knowing.

It'd be easier to believe it to be a grand lie than to believe it. Lambert was always so virulent, so searingly spiteful, and even though the outbursts in his later years happened less frequently they'd ratcheted up so much in force--

And then Vesemir realizes that all the most erratic and violent behavioral problems that justified further lessons had happened _after_ the lessons first started, and needs to sit down.

* * *

"Barmin nearly raised me from a child, and he never once acted--"

"Fuck if I know," Lambert answers, immediate as always, aiming and loosing a dart at the target he'd burned onto a sheet of wood. It's a crude depiction of the face of a man Vesemir doesn't immediately recognize. It's shameful, the relief he feels at that. "Maybe you weren't his type."

"If he--"

"Look," Lambert cuts him off, "You really think I want to waste any more of my life dwelling over fucking _Barmin's_ sexual tastes now that he's finally dead? Just 'cause I sucked his cock on the regular doesn't mean I _liked_ the guy."

Vesemir has to lean back against the wall, feeling as suddenly old and tired as his age. Even with all the alluding around it doesn't soften the full impact of the blow.

The sear of all following implication into words that etches it indelibly, undeniably, into reality.

"Did Varin ever--" Vesemir starts, then stops. Even with all that went unsaid now said, he still can't make himself finish the sentence.

Lambert looses another dart without bothering to look at him. "Would it change anything if he did? He's just as fucking dead."

"It would have," Vesemir says firmly.

"Hah!" Lambert's next dart goes off-course from the sheer force of the barked laugh, and he curses before trotting over to pick it up from where it's landed in the grass.

"It would have changed it with me," Vesemir amends, and tries to make it clear that it's the truth.

Lambert straightens, spinning the dart in his fingers. "Oh, yeah, 'cuz you'd go against the entire keep for an _injustice_. Papa Vesemir," he says, turning to face him, "If you'd ever actually been willing to do that, _you wouldn't still be here._ "

Vesemir swallows once before he speaks. "I would--"

"Vesemir," Lambert says, striding towards him and stopping short just over the edge of too close for comfort. "Look me in the eyes and tell me-- if I had told you this, when I was a kid, what would you have honestly _done?"_

Vesemir can look him in the eye, but just that.

"Right?" Lambert says, almost _indulgent_. He's acting like he's in on the joke again but it's worse: he's acting like he's finally letting Vesemir in on it.

"You'd have found your reason. You wouldn't've said shit. Life's shit all over. Gotta survive anyway. So-- welcome to the world as it is, I guess. Took your fucking time to finally catch up, eh?"

Lambert gestures behind them, to the ruin that's been made of their keep. "And here the party's already over."

Lambert turns away. "Varin, huh. Not so far as I know. Not like I was out and about polling the fucking _keep_ , Papa Wolf. Had my hands full." He gestures crudely as to what they were full of, as if Vesemir needed the aid. "Didn't you ever even listen to all those things they said? I was the _favorite_."

He's grown into his hands. He hadn't, when Heironymus had proposed his supplementary lessons, when Barmin said it would be good for Lambert's continuing development.

When Vesemir had agreed with them.

Lambert eventually gets bored with his game of darts and leaves. Vesemir stays in the courtyard.

* * *

"If I can prevent it from happening to another--" Vesemir says. Lambert's on kitchen duty, deftly peeling ribbons of withered skin off a stack of carrots from their stores.

"No kids left," Lambert says with a shrug of his shoulder. "What, you gonna steal some more? 'Cause it didn't work out so fucking great for you the last time. I really think some people minded."

"But you're here," Vesemir pushes, "If you could--"

"Vesemir," Lambert says. He's giving him that insect-look again, the idle observation of a passing fascination. Scorn might be more bearable-- at least within it there's a measure of recognition as a man.

"Oh, Papa Vesemir," Lambert repeats. "Do you _honestly_ think if I hadn't heard that they'd disemboweled the schoolmaster and burned the mages alive, I'd ever have come back?"

* * *

Vesemir asks, once, about the nickname, when Lambert is saddling up to leave back on the Path.

Vesemir never before minded, but now it's become another pointed nail weighing on the lodestone of his back every time Lambert says it.

Lambert grins, as boyish as ever. Boyish as it was when he was just a boy. If there ever had been anything fragile or transparent to it, something telling that Vesemir had missed along with everything else, it's long gone; now, all he can see are the edges of what once was, still shining and sharp as any glass left broken.

"Ha!" Lambert laughs, more of a wild shout that staggers him to the side to lean against the exposed stone. It doesn't echo like it would've, were the walls still intact, lost in the open emptiness of the sky. It seems like it still should. Lambert always had a flare for the dramatic.

"Finally!! _Now_ you ask," he says as he spins to face Vesemir fully, hands spread wide.

"The punchline, Papa Vesemir, was always just that _I fucking hate my father_."

* * *

Lambert leaves, after that. He doesn't tell anyone he's going; if he'll be back. Vesemir, it seems, was the one to talk to him last, after all.

The others ask him, then, why Lambert left so early, and Vesemir doesn't know what he could say.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a thought on what difference sunlight makes.
> 
> if you liked my fic, please remember to leave kudos!
> 
> (｡òᴗ-)7✧ i like seeing who liked my stuff.


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